Builders
Enterprise Software Extensibility for Clients & Partners
CONTEXT
Even within a single industry, supply chain operations are different in every company—and even in different organizations within a single company.
Because each enterprise requires a custom solution (that also adheres to established standards) the cost of standing up a supply chain management solution, or migrating to something new is often a deal breaker.
Builders needed to address this problem on two fronts:
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Give partners and internal enablement teams a low/no-code tool that cuts down on client's time-to-value.
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Give clients the ability to expand/tweak their product on-the-fly (with the same low/no-code tooling), saving time and money.
ACTION
A Tiger Team, code-named "Bear", was tasked to enable our systems integrators with low/code means of customizing and extending the Supply Chain Intelligence Suite for our clients.
I led a this team of product, engineering, data science, sales enablement, consulting, & design to parse through complex technical use cases and distill them into a centralized and easy-to-use toolset.
At the end of our 3 month sprint, Bear team was aligned around a single vision prototype. The prototype served as a single source of truth and a resource for socializing the application across product teams.
System Integrator As-Is Journey
Over arching hill to guide the team
We started by mapping out the journeys of Systems Integrators (the folks primary doing enterprise customization/extensibility work) to understand their process.
Not only did we build empathy with these folks, but we also gained a deeper understanding of our Suite's architecture and the data constraints that we needed to consider moving forward.
A selection of murals that reflect our working sessions with engineering
A rapid cadence of iteration and stand-ups with our partners in engineering was essential for the design team to understand the technical material that we were tasked with distilling.
Fun fact: A designer on our team won a superlative award for being a "Mural Champion" thanks in part to this effort. 🏆
While our initial users were going to be Systems Integrators, we knew that ultimately our clients would be using these tools. With that in mind, our Content and UI design patterns within the Builder interface mimicked the patterns and language present in the suite experience.
A selection of murals that reflect our working sessions to diagram data connection & mapping flows
Many of our prospects were leveraging AI/ML in one way or another. In order to win & keep their business, we needed a way for them to bring that data quickly and inexpensively.
Our team broke down input/output process for Models running outside of SCIS, and designed a rule Builder that enabled users to connect to those models with little/no development ask.
The status quo on AI/ML migration and integration timelines for these folks was 12-24 months. Rule Builder helped to cut that in half.
IMPACT
Builders was hugely successful is enabling the Supply Chain Intelligence Suite (SCIS) to position itself as a truly extensible platform capable of serving clients across diverse industries and use cases.
Immediately following the launch of Builders in SCIS, the application was used an inner-source catalyst for the re-launch of IBM Environmental Intelligence Suite and by a number of other teams as a tool to enable modernization of products.
SALES FUNNEL GROWTH
Enabled scalability of 3 software suites into industries and use cases previously untapped by our business unit
SPEED TO MARKET
Increased our speed to market by a measure of months for new features and product lines
AI INTEGRATION
Allowed clients to integrate their 3rd party or homegrown AI without leaving the app or engaging expensive services teams.